Why this Blog ?
News articles in the Wide World of Web, quite often disappear with time, when they are relocated as archives with a different url. Archives in this blog serve as a library for those who are interested in doing Research on Aadhaar Related Topics. Articles are published with details of original publication date and the url.

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When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.” -A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathandescribes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone badI have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017

Special

Here is what the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance, which examined the draft N I A Bill said.

1. There is no feasibility study of the project]

2. The project was approved in haste

3. The system has far-reaching consequences for national security

4. The project is directionless with no clarity of purpose

5. It is built on unreliable and untested technology

6. The exercise becomes futile in case the project does not continue beyond the present number of 200 million enrolments

7. There is lack of coordination and difference of views between various departments and ministries of government on the project

"All we have to show for the hundreds of thousands of crore spent on Aadhar is a Congress ticket for Nilekani" Yashwant Sinha.(27/02/2014)

TV Mohandas Pai, former chief financial officer and head of human resources, tweeted: "selling his soul for power; made his money in the company wedded to meritocracy." Money Life Article

Nilekani’s reporting structure is unprecedented in history; he reports directly to the Prime Minister, thus bypassing all checks and balances in government - Home Minister Chidambaram

To refer to Aadhaar as an anti corruption tool despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is mystifying. That it is now officially a Rs.50,000 Crores solution searching for an explanation is also without any doubt. -- Statement by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP & Member, Standing Committee on Finance

Finance minister P Chidambaram’s statement, in an exit interview to this newspaper, that Aadhaar needs to be re-thought completely is probably the last nail in its coffin. :-) Financial Express

The Rural Development Ministry headed byJairam Rameshcreated a road Block and refused to make Aadhaar mandatory for making wage payment to people enrolled under the world’s largest social security scheme NRGA unless all residents are covered.

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Thursday, May 18, 2017

11420 - Aadhaar and an Omnipresent State That Will Never Forget You- The Wire

If the aggressive anti-rights stand of the government in the Aadhaar case triumphs, the march towards an authoritarian state will be swift.

The Indian attorney general has argued that there is no fundamental right to privacy. Credit: Nick Youngson, Creative Commons

“It’s clear, isn’t it?—to assert that “I” has certain “rights” with respect to the State is exactly the same as asserting that a gram weighs the same as a ton. That explains the way things are divided up: To the ton go the rights, to the gram the duties. And the natural path from nullity to greatness is this: Forget that you’re a gram and feel yourself a millionth part of a ton.”
∼ Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi’s argument to the Supreme Court that “citizens do not have absolute right over their bodies” elicited justified outrage. More revealing though, was his claim that the state is like a corporation, individuals are its members and therefore the “collective might of the state” could be deployed in the interest of an “orderly life, peace and tranquility”. This doctrine – with its origins in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, later perfected by G.W.F. Hegel – conceives the state and other corporate and legal entities as ‘social organisms’ that exist logically prior to, and have rights over and above, their constituent parts. The state, so conceived, has a life of its own, cares most for its own preservation and is the source and basis of all rights. Since it emerges from a mythical union of its members, it is the embodiment of the social and moral ‘whole’ and the realisation of the ‘common will’. Freedom then is the freedom to do what the state prescribes; greatness, in the readiness to subordinate oneself in the service of the state.

‘The state will not forget you’

If this is the theory, it follows that such a state must be all seeing, all knowing and all pervasive to enforce an “orderly, peaceful and tranquil life” for all. It is hardly surprising that the Indian state has been gradually building a stupendous machine to identify and profile, intercept, track and monitor its population. While it is common for bureaucracies to collect information on citizens, databases produced by various departments and agencies remain safely isolated from each other, making it difficult to monitor and profile people. The Aadhaar programme’s most important function is to create ‘linkage’ between databases, by attaching identification data – biometric and demographic – with behavioural data – bank transactions, communications, locational information or anything that can be picked up by surveillance systems. When ready, this Argus Panoptes will grow a billion eyes, sprout a billion ears and record in a boundless ledger of statistics the thoughts, desires and deeds of all. In an ominous tone, Rohatgi announced in the Supreme Court, “Even if you want to be forgotten, the state is not willing to forget you.”

Having run out of credible pretexts, the Narendra Modi administration has gradually become more honest about the Aadhaar programme. It is now common knowledge that the true purpose of Aadhaar is surveillance and profiling of ‘residents’. With big data on citizens, big corporations like Microsoft and Google have already begun to look for ways to tap into its commercial possibilities. What is frightening is the general indifference to all this, perhaps a reflection of our acquiescence to – even willing participation in – a culture of surveillance where every aspect of our lives can be observed, measured and commodified by corporate and state power. The founder of Facebook could even declare recently that “privacy is no longer a social norm”. And more and more, we have internalised the line that ‘those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide’. We also buy the excuse that privacy needs to be ‘balanced’ (compromised) with security and other concerns.

‘Nothing to hide, hence nothing to fear’

B.R. Ambedkar once pointed out that a fundamental right”‘means that the majority [or the state] has no right to do a certain thing” and it places “an absolute limitation upon the power of the majority”. As a liberal, he would argue that for citizens, the presumption must always be in favour of liberty and the burden of justification always on those who seek to restrict liberty. Conversely, for the state, the presumption must always be in the direction of tyranny. The assumption – rightly – is that the state is likely to encroach upon freedoms unless its actions are significantly restricted. For instance, if the police want to search your home, they must first back up their suspicion with credible evidence to obtain express legal authorisation to do so. This process ought to be a painstaking process, and the burden of justification heavy, since liberal societies carefully circumscribe the extent of intrusion by the state. In other words, enforcing the law must not be easy.

Consider this: almost all of us at some point have knowingly or unknowingly broken laws – bribed a clerk, jumped a light, ‘negligently’ flown a kite (yeah, it’s illegal), indulged in ‘indecent behaviour’ in public or made love ‘against the order of nature’. To land in jail, one has to first be ‘found out’ and identified, then be apprehended, tried and convicted. The harm caused by these minor ‘infractions’ often does not justify the trouble and effort required to punish them. In a Surveillance State, this trouble and effort is reduced effectively to zero. An omniscient and omnipresent state will have enough on everyone to ‘frame’ them whenever it chooses to. And when the whole society lives in violation of some or the other law, and the state ‘knows’ all of it, who will it decide to punish? Clearly, you will be put away the moment you become a threat to the ruling order. Law enforcement in such a regime would become targeted and selective, not principled or rule bound. As it turns out, we all may have something to hide after all.

But more importantly, constructive change can only occur in a system that tacitly or explicitly accommodates deviance. People often experiment and explore living alternatively – often outside the law – for societies to learn and change what it considers acceptable and thereby to transform or temper the codes that govern it. Law breaking is often a conscious risk, even a tactic, that people employ to shed light on a greater injustice or sometimes simply to oppose unjust laws. They do this with the understanding that law, as a system of formal rationality, must serve as an instrument of social adjustment and evolution. When one-sided and moralistic, it becomes a mask for despotism. A society of perfectly obedient ‘lawful’ subjects is one that is incapable of imagining another.

‘Why do you want civil rights?’

Though mass surveillance programmes have had very little success in anticipating and thwarting major terror attacks abroad, for a moment, let’s take the argument in favour of such programmes seriously. Imagine a condition of total surveillance, the dream of surveillance mongers. This, they hope, will create a perfectly law-abiding world. The impossibility of escaping the law would make everyone obedient – citizens would be transparent to the authorities, their behaviour would be predictable and orderly, and society would run like a well-oiled machine.

This is a conception of law transformed into an instrument of political power. In this world, the actions of those who undertake surveillance programmes are always self-justifying, while the acts of those they watch over are always suspect. To the watchers, every technological breakthrough provides enhanced tools for intrusion into the private lives of people and they often devise new legal contrivances to launch fresh assaults on civil liberties. After all, if you have done nothing wrong, the watchers will ask, why do you need civil rights to protect you?

Sure enough, Rohatgi has argued that “there is no fundamental right to privacy”. More recently, he dismissed privacy concerns as the “luxury of the rich”, ergo the poor, “who need benefits”, cannot afford (and therefore deserve no) privacy. When the attorney general talks about trading rights with (often illusory) promises of ‘benefits’, one must be deeply alarmed.

What was once called liberty, we now call privacy

The philosophical and legal debates over privacy has an interesting history and can be traced back to the elementary distinction between the public and private spheres. Proponents of privacy speak of it as a value or domain where one can be free from interference of others – ‘the right to be left alone’ – or, as a concept that is essential for human dignity. Critics of privacy, on the other hand, consider it at worst a redundant concept, at best ‘derivative’ of other rights.

However, privacy is much more than the right to be left alone. It is freedom to determine how much of, and in what manner, we wish to share ourselves with others. Far from being derivative of other rights, it is implicit in many of our other freedoms, but is not exhausted by them. There are laws that protect our bodies, enable us to isolate ourselves, protect our right to associate with others, ensure that our conversations remain private and so on, all of which presuppose privacy. But privacy is also a social norm, where we constantly negotiate our varying assessments and and expectations of privacy with others, and enforce it through a range of social regulations and practices.

The direct effect of widespread surveillance is to be deprived of the freedom to determine and protect what we regard as private, or the possibility of negotiating it with others. But the indirect effect of privacy is even more pernicious, where simply the possibility of being watched makes people less likely do things that they think might arouse suspicion. Under the public eye, people behave as they would like to be seen, which is often at odds with how they actually are or would like to be. Perhaps the first empirical study of such ‘chilling effects’ in the context of online surveillance was published recently by Jonathon Penny of Oxford university. Penny’s paper confirms a long-held belief, that being watched creates a tendency towards conformity and self-censorship. The French philosopher Michael Foucault popularised the image of the Panopticon, a circular prison building designed by the 19th-century British jurist Jeremy Bentham (whose spirit still haunts the Indian Penal Code) to efficiently control inmates who think they are under the watch of an ‘omnipresent inspector’. To Bentham, his prison was a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind”. Being watched makes people more docile, conformist and deferential, and less likely to think and act independently. The attack on privacy is therefore, most of all, an attack on the domain of creative thought, activity and dissent.

As the Supreme Court faces the challenge of curbing the voracious ambitions of the executive, it must recall John Stuart Mill’s ‘most cogent reason’ for objecting to governmental interference: “the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power”. Generalised surveillance will greatly enhance the power of the state by being able to inspect over and intrude into the lives of all citizens. If the aggressively anti-rights stand of the government triumphs in the Aadhaar/PAN debate, the descent towards authoritarianism could be quick, and perhaps unstoppable.

Aadhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.”

John Dreze,Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, Ex-NAC Member

UID project is full of ambiguity, confusions and suspicions, but no answers -Usha Ramanathan

The Reserve Bank says Aadhaar is not good enough to open a bank account

You can Beat the UID reader with candle wax and Fevicol - J.T.D Souza

The very premise of Aadhar is flawed

It is a certification that those who claim to think on behalf of India or its underprivileged understand it so differently from the beneficiaries they think of.

In a nutshell, Aadhar will not bring about any of the benefits that are intended for its intended beneficiaries. Because that will be solving a problem of governance by adding another layer, that is imaginary and unnecessary.

To call it "technological leadership" is as removed from reality as calling a reader a writer of the book. At best it will mean that we can take a technology and ram it down the throat of the poor while other nations with stronger democratic roots and respect for citizens have not been able to do so for reasons of building consensus.

"Aadhar" is like dropping a car by helicopter in a village where there is no road and hope every villager can reach wherever they may want to go.

For anyone willing to think, Aadhar is a reflection of the huge disconnect that India has from both the world of the under privileged and the rest of the world.

Aadhaar the Last Nail in UPA II's Coffin

"All we have to show for the hundreds of thousands of crore spent on Aadhar is a Congress ticket for Nilekani" Yashwant Sinha.(27/02/2014)

UID NOT UBIQUITOUS ANY LONGER MR. NILEKANI - TRUTH HAS PREVAILED JUST BEFORE THE ELECTIONS.

WhatsApp gained users because it was useful, and people wanted to download and use it. Aadhaar, sadly, cannot be said to have "users" yet. There are as yet few uses. This is why Mr Nilekani has to emphasise the number of enrolments, not the benefits that flow from Aadhaar - because those exist today only in theory. And the simple fact is that enrolments should not be seen as a sign of success. The Only Good Idea - Business Standard

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

TV Mohandas Pai, former chief financial officer and head of human resources, tweeted: "selling his soul for power; made his money in the company wedded to meritocracy." Money Life Article

The expose shows how citizens of Nepal and Bangladesh are offered Aadhaar cards without identity proof. The sting reveals that even MLAs and gazetted officers sign on the forged documents to make Aadhaar cards. IBN Live

To refer to Aadhaar as an anti corruption tool despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is mystifying. That it is now officially a Rs.50,000 Crores solution searching for an explanation is also without any doubt. -- Statement by Rajeev Chandrasekhar,MP & Member, Standing Committee on Finance

Finance minister P Chidambaram’s statement, in an exit interview to this newspaper, that Aadhaar needs to be re-thought completely is probably the last nail in its coffin. :-) Financial Express

Please think through before supporting UID/ Aadhaar, so you do not regret your decision.

Emphasising the need for separation of powers, James Madison bluntly observed in his essay, Federalist 51."Because men are not angels," they need government to prevent them, by force when necessary, from invading the lives, property, and liberty of their fellow citizens. He also noted that the same non-angelic men can wield the government’s coercive machinery to use it tyrannically—even in a democracy.

·The Rural Development Ministry headed by Jairam Ramesh created a road Block and refused to make Aadhaar mandatory for making wage payment to people enrolled under the world’s largest social security scheme NRGA unless all residents are covered.

·Nilekani’s reporting structure is unprecedented in history; he reports directly to the Prime Minister, thus bypassing all checks and balances in government - Home Minister Chidambaram

·AaAdhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.” John Dreze, Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, Ex-NAC Member

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”Mahatma Gandhi

"Protest is not something you delegate, politics is not something you outsource. It is what you stand for literally"Shiv Visvanathan, Indian Express.

"Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always. "Mahatma Gandhi

"The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are."Mahatma Gandhi

"Let us begin by being clear... about General Smuts' new law. All Indians must now be fingerprinted... like criminals. Men and women. No marriage other than a Christian marriage is considered valid. Under this act our wives and mothers are whores. And every man here is a bastard."-Mahatma Gandhi

"It is easy to laugh at people who fire arrows at helicopter gunships, but on the other hand it is not so easy to defeat people who are willing to fire arrows at helicopter gunships."Vietnam: A War Lost And Won' authored by Nigel Cawthorne

You can fool all the people sometimes,You can fool some people all the time,But you cannot fool all the people all the time.Truth Shall prevail.Satyameva Jayate.

Aadhaar was meant to deduplicate peoples id's and Aadhaar itself is a Duplicate of NPR and needs deduplication according to Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) headed by Secretary Sumit Bose.

Which is the bigger crime a poor family double dipping on PDS to stay alive or Govt wasting mega bucks on a white elephant called Aadhaar ?

Remember Aadhaar is not an ID card but just a Number to authenticate and tell you if you are in fact you and UIDAI will splurge Rs1.5 lakh crores ( Rs 1,500, 000, 000,000 ) in the next five years. What do people with Aadhaar get in return ? A lot of empty promises. It won't take long for people in India to wake up and understand what is going on.

How do we explain Loss of Privacy?Privacy is like our VISION.We will appreciate its loss when we go BLIND.

Massive collection of Video Clips on Unique Identity. Click on this Link http://flotadaslimaymedio.com.ar/tag/unique-identification/orderby-relevance/page1.html

WHAT AM I ?????"Yes, it is voluntary. But the service providers might make it mandatory. In the long run, I wouldn't call it compulsory. I would rather say that it will become ubiquitous"Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI Chairman (Excerpts from a conversation with Sadiq Naqvi and Akash Bisht) Answer: Aadhaar, the Unique Identity number & a Bar Code that each and every Indian will be branded with linked to a National Database maintained by UIDAI, with Help from L1 Identity a US Multinational.

"Opponents of the Aadhaar number have included advocates of privacy rights. The number however, is linked to limited personal information, with no profiling data included. Submitting a father’s name for example, is not required, allowing residents to adopt any name of their choosing and free themselves from caste identification."Nandan Nilekani's personal Opinion1061 - We have your number - OUTLOOK

Do all Indians want to become Numbers and be tracked like animals ?Do we have a Choice ?

IF IT TAKES SIX MONTHS TO ISSUE ONE MILLION NOT SO UINQUE IDENTITIES, HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO ISSUE 600 MILLION OR 1.2 BILLION UNIQUE IDENTITIES ?

WORDS OF WISDOM

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.”Mahatma Gandhi"I have never known legislation of this nature being directed against free men in any part of the world. I know that indentured Indians in Natal are subject to a drastic system of passes, but these poor fellows can hardly be classed as free men."Mahatma Gandhi"...giving of finger prints, required by the Ordinance, was quite a novelty in South Africa. With a view to seeing some literature on the subject, I read a volume on finger impressions by Mr. Henry, a police officer, from which I gathered that finger prints were required by law only from criminals."Mahatma Gandhi"Democracy was the greatest gift of our freedom struggle to the people of India. Independence made the nation free. Democracy made our people free. A free people are a people who are governed by their will and ruled with their consent. A free people are a people who participate in decisions affecting their lives and their destinies".Rajiv Gandhi “How shall a democracy ensure its secret intelligence apparatus becomes neither a vehicle for conspiracy nor a suppressor of traditional liberties of democratic self-government?”Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Hi-tech without Panchayati Raj is just a bogus stunt for geeks and nerds."Mani Shankar Aiyar, Congress leaderAadhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.”John Dreze, Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, National Advisory Committee Member"It is a Bad Idea to Marry UID with NREGA"Reetika Kehera"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."Ayn Rand “The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy”.Alex Carey, a noted Australian activist."People willing to trade freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."Ben Franklin.Liberty has never come from the government; it has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."Woodrow Wilson"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".Edmund Burke"Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist".Edmund Burke"Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms".Simon Jenkins, Guardian UK“Privacy is not something that people feel, except in its absence. Remove it and you destroy something at the heart of being human.”Phil Booth, National co-ordinator of the campaign No2IDIn reality, Aadhaar intrudes into people's privacy that is hidden under the guise of reaching out.Srijit Mishra

Ten things you must know about UID

Some facts about the UID project that Indian residents should be aware of:

1. Aadhaar (the UID number) is not mandatory. People can choose not to be a part of the exercise.2. It is not restricted to Indian citizens only and is meant for residents of India, irrespective of their citizenship. An Aadhaar card does not establish citizenship of India, it is meant for identification.3. Even people without proper identification documents can apply for Aadhaar. Authorised individuals, who already have an Aadhaar, can introduce residents who don't possess any documents to establish their identity to enable them to receive their Aadhaar.4. Aadhar will not replace other identification documents such as ration card or passport.5. The UIDAI will collect only biometric and demographic information about an individual and will not ask for info on caste, religion or language.6. Date of Birth is optional (for people who don't remember/know their date of birth) and approximate age will suffice.7. Transgenders have been included in the options under gender and they need not classify themselves as male or female.8. Residents of India have an option to link their UID number to their bank accounts.9. To get an UID number residents will have to go to the nearest Aadhaar enrollment camp, details of which will be published in the local media. Residents will have to carry along certain documents, mentioned in the advertisement. Residents will also be photographed and have their fingerprints and iris scanned. The Aadhaar numbers will be issued within 20-30 days.10. The draft National Identification Authority of India bill has provisions against impersonation, providing false information and for protection of personal information collected by the UIDAI. Violations can attract penalties in the form of fines of up to Rs 1 crore and imprisonment extending up to a life term.